


juliet

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: PRISTIN (Band), SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: F/M, nayoung centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 17:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: Nayoung dreams in colors that do exist.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kurdoodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurdoodle/gifts).



Nayoung has lots of dreams.

She wants to make it far, she wants to rise the ranks and hold the top spot, be known and be loved.

Long years of training, hard work and slow changes have taught her to endure. The only way to hold on to the path she's set herself on is by putting these aspirations at the dead center of her life, building her desires and interests around anything that will advance her to them.

But more than that- more than that- she also has so many dreams she can’t remember.

She knows she has them because everyone has dreams at night but they fade away before she wakes up, or they linger for seconds while she orients herself, combing her tangled, dyed hair with her fingers and pulling herself out of bed.

By the time she remembers she had one, it’s gone.

 

-

 

Nayoung feels some strange deja vu when the air conditioning turns on and blasts her in the face.

“What’s up?” Minkyung asks. The girls are scattered around the Pledis building, but Nayoung and her were practicing Be The Star before the sudden distraction.

“I think I had a dream about this,” she answers, and Minkyung nods attentively. “Last night or the night before.”

Kyungwon calls from across the room and Minkyung yells back “just a minute!” She turns back.

“Go,” Nayoung says.

“Are you sure? Won-ah can wait.”

“It’s not important,” Nayoung says, and when Minkyung pauses in hesitation, she adds, “I want to think about it myself.”

“Oh,” Minkyung says hastily, and she runs off to help Kyungwon with whatever mess she’s gotten into this time.

Nayoung has always been this: straightforward and independent, more than anything.

She sits on the floor and runs through the sequence.

Nayoung wakes up from a nap, hand scanning her sheets for the sensation of her phone. Seconds later, it falls out of the folds of her blanket, ringing the tune of an SNSD instrumental and she scrambles to silence it. It’s refreshingly cool to the touch. The call, however, is from her father. She’s being sent home.

Next she’s in the dead of winter, lost in a forest of evergreens and stuck in the cold. The sun overhead paints streaks of light on her skin, but the heat doesn’t reach her. Nayoung calls and calls and calls, but no one answers.

In the last of her recollections, her brother takes a trip overseas for university. She sits at home in her room, waiting for a letter or email or text. On Facebook her mother shows Nayoung pictures of him with new friends and endless smiles, and she starts crying in the middle of the living room. He comes back two weeks later and she bursts into tears for the second time.

She connects the dots easily. Yesterday she rewatched the video of her birthday celebration and relived the anger, sadness and relief all over again. She pretends not to be hurt and pretends to be aloof, but in the end it all falls apart. They mean so much to her. In front of Pristin, she starts to grasp there is no point in keeping up appearances. Her weakness to them has to become her strength.

 

 -

 -

 

Aimless crushes are easy because there are no real expectations and as such, there is no pain.

She unintentionally gets Wonwoo to confide in her in the summer of 2012, when they’re accidentally walking at the same pace and neither has any reason to speed up. One of the nice instructors at Pledis let the trainees out early to go to the festival, and they walked over together as a group in an excited, sweaty frenzy. Now the other kids have run far ahead to the snack stands, but health-conscious, sloth-like Nayoung holds herself back.

“I think Soonyoung got his heart broken again,” Wonwoo says. Said boy in the distance waves a plastic, rainbow-colored pinwheel in the air, Seungkwan beside him raising his neck to blow air through the pockets. Wonwoo doesn't look upset enough for Nayoung to be worried, but she feels bad for Soonyoung.

“Aww.” Nayoung pouts. She pulls her stained white t-shirt away from her skin, fanning her face with her hand. The air is warm, but both of them are relaxed and the conversation is unrestrained. In the future, they can’t speak without awkwardness, the irony of knowing someone longer yet lesser, but neither of them will realize this for a while longer. “Won’t he be embarrassed to know you’re telling me?”

“Nah,” Wonwoo says with a shrug. “He’s not gonna know! And if he does it’s okay, he’ll forgive me. You’re a nice person.”

She grins. “Thanks. He moved a little too fast?”

“Wanted something that wasn’t going to happen,” Wonwoo corrects, and Nayoung nods understandingly. “But, you’re right, he made the mistake of falling too hard.”

“I’m amazed he had time to.” What with the intense dance and vocal practices he’s put through.

“Now is better than after we debut.”

They reach the stalls, the sun still in the sky this late due to mid-summer day lengths. Nayoung sees Jihoon watching a rock band perform with excited movements, Yebin running around the jewelry sales tables, and Mingyu, lost, looking for a familiar face. She's tempted to wave him over, but he disappears amongst others and she sighs to herself, knowing he’ll be alright. This is youth.

Wonwoo glances around but without any inclination towards a particular booth, they just keep walking. Often separated even within the company building, Nayoung appreciates the chance to talk to the boys. After all, they aim towards the same goal as her. “Crushes, I think, are fine. I just don’t like to see Soonyoung hurt. He’ll recover though.”

“I guess it won’t take too long,” Nayoung says optimistically.

“Won’t take too long before he falls again either.” Wonwoo laughs. “I won’t do that to myself, it's not hard. Keep a distance.” Self restraint, Nayoung contemplates. When it is too late and you’ve already become attached, the only option is not to expect anything.

“I don’t believe in love at first sight,” she says.

“Neither do I,” Wonwoo replies with a smile. Oh no, though, she thinks, when she follows his line of sight. He stares off into the crowd, a long look that suggests to her she’s not witnessing fleeting, summer romance feelings.

“Who,” she asks, slowly, curiously.

“Don’t tell,” he says, and she wasn’t going to anyway, but she watches him walk over by the other trainees with vulnerability in his eyes, without words.

 

It’s what you need as an idol, she finds later, as the conversation replays in her mind for years to come. To fall (for another) is to fail (yourself and the group depending on you). To date is to break promises and lose resolve. But it’s okay to have someone to think of - more than eye candy, less than anything she’ll ever feel like she needs.

If that day makes her feel something new for him, she lets it sit in the back of her mind until it cools completely.

 

-

 

Dreams are interesting because Nayoung can never tell none of it could happen in real life until she wakes up.

She mans the front of her parents’ restaurant and in front of the stoves is Siyeon, who most certainly has never cooked anything better than a fried egg in real life. Also, instead of noodles in soup, she’s making chocolate crepes.

The bell at the door rings and Nayoung greets the first customers with a lively hello.

“Hi, Nayoung,” her high school friends chime as they sit down to a table. “Two orders of chicken wings.” Nayoung takes the order with a placid smile, and tells Siyeon, who is now working the deep fryers.

Another person comes in. It’s Won Bin. Nayoung has half a heart attack.

“Welcome, you can sit anywhere you like,” she stammers, and he flashes a literal award-winning smile.

“Sorry, I’m not here to eat,” he says, and her awestruck look falters. “Actually, I was looking for someone to show me around the area. Do you think you could do that?”

“Would she ever!” is shouted from the table where Nayoung’s friends sit, eating chocolate crepes. They look happy, and don’t seem to have any care for the state of the restaurant, or Nayoung really, content with their food cooked by a master chef.

“I’d love to,” she almost cries out, but in walks Han Sung Soo and she clamps her mouth shut. It was last week, wasn’t it? When she failed the Pledis Entertainment audition.

“Chicken crepes,” the CEO says, and Siyeon has disappeared from the kitchen, off to buy more cocoa powder. Figures.

“Of course,” Nayoung says hurriedly, bowing in apology to Won Bin, who looks heartbreakingly disappointed to be left by the doorway. Nayoung will cry into her pillow tonight, but before that she runs into the kitchen and mixes batter like her life depends on it.

She’s given up hope on her singing career, but that doesn’t mean she can throw away the restaurant, her absent family who still depends on it, for the thrill of a single day. They have a reputation to uphold.

The group comes first before the individual.

 

Nayoung awakens in a warm sweat, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

 

-

 

It’s Nayoung’s last real day back at Pledis, before she’s shipped off to I.O.I dorms.

The rest of Pledis Girlz are resting at home, and Jieqiong has gone on an outing with Eunwoo. With all the preparations, and fighting her own nerves, Nayoung hasn’t had any time to pay attention to the little things. Maybe Minkyung and Kyungwon have been awful at discipline or maybe the staff lied about the last people to use this practice room having been the girls (he wouldn’t, she needs to leave room for hope somewhere), but nevertheless, she now stands in front of stray clothing and streaks on the floor.

“This room is huge,” she complains out loud, staring at the area she’s just assigned herself to clean.

“Nayoung?”

She’s stunned to hear any voice, being that she thought no one would be here. (Nayoung only came today for sentimental reasons. It’s not goodbye forever, but it feels strange.) It was silly of her. She’ll blame her schedule for her forgetting Seventeen is having a comeback this month.

Choi Seungcheol pokes his head through the doorway, microphone in hand. “You’re still here?”

“I was just going to sweep and mop,” Nayoung says, but he’s already heading to the supply closet. “Um...” She waits uncertainly, afraid she’s misunderstanding and if she tells him not to help he’ll clarify that what he’s doing has nothing to do with her.

Seungcheol puts down the microphone and takes out the broom and mop.

“I can do it myself,” she asserts, walking over and doing all short of pulling the cleaning tools out of his hands to stop this uncomfortable reliance on someone who has other things to do.

“It’s okay, I’m done practicing anyway, and don’t you think my kids haven’t pulled all their weight in cleaning before?” He holds out the handles. “Sweep or mop?”

“My kids,” Nayoung repeats, as she takes the broom, too distracted to seize both. The sound of the words is fascinating, the reality of her new position sinking in positively for the first time.

“Being an older sibling is pretty intuitive,” Seungcheol says encouragingly. He sets the mop against the wall and starts picking things off the floor. At this point, Nayoung feels like resistance would just be counterproductive. “My brother makes it look hard.”

Nayoung thinks of tossing back a witty retort, hesitates, and then goes for it anyway. “I wonder whose fault that was,” she says flatly, and Seungcheol quits leaning over, stands up straight with a sock in his hand and just looks at her.

“I should just go, huh,” he says, pretending to fume, and she could respond that she didn’t need him in the first place, but instead she gives a apology, an elicited but regardlessly amused one.

Nayoung gets close to the ground to sweep the dirt into the dustpan, focusing on the particles that get trapped at the edge. “Were you scared?” she asks, to lead them, to be responsible. When before you were the youngest, the one whose mistakes could be covered for. He reads the question correctly.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn't,” Seungcheol answers, shrugging. “But it really isn’t bad! You can take advantage of them!”

He still acts like a child sometimes. In a twisted way that’s reassuring. He hasn’t lost who he is.

“When does it get hard for you?” she asks. This is her last chance to get advice, knowledge she feels lacking in.

He thinks for a minute, letting the water from the mop drip on the wooden floor. “Controlling the kids is a pain. They do whatever they want.”

“Must be a boys’ problem,” she says casually, looking at her fingernails. (They need to be repainted.)

“What?” He sounds shocked, laughing. She looks up in surprise at the reaction. “You try handling them for a day.”

“They wouldn’t listen to me,” she says simply and shakes her head. _See_ , he’s saying to her with that look on his face. “Because I’ve had no time to get respect from them,” she continues. “But you have, so...” She gives a little smile, finally.

“Oh please, Nayoung,” he says, but he never manages to quit that grin.

 

“Hey,” Seungcheol starts a few minutes later, hesitantly. They’re oh, maybe halfway done with the room. Nayoung imagines doing the work herself and feels her stomach churning again.

“Yeah?”

“Have any of the I.O.I members ever asked about us?”

“Us...?” she asks, mind blank.

“Well, me,” he admits with rose colored cheeks, and she realizes he was initially referring to Seventeen, his everything and therefore his primary association with the word “us”.

“Oh, um... I can't remember,” she says, and to his credit his face doesn’t fall too far, just transient downturned eyes and an expression of futility. “I think Mingyu was brought up before... You have interest in-”

Seungcheol denies it immediately. “I just want to know if I’m _wanted_ ,” he says, facetiously. She believes him.

“I wouldn’t know,” Nayoung promises.

 

Her stomach starts flipping again, and Nayoung has to stop the final length of her sweeping to crouch down and hold it. She winces at Seungcheol’s silent, questioning look. “I’m very hungry,” she says, which is a truth, just not the cause of her shaky, nervous butterflies.

“You should go eat,” he replies slowly.

“Diet.”

Seungcheol can’t argue with that.

“When’s the debut?”

“Early May-”

“Pledis Girlz.”

Nayoung feels the tension sink deeper and deeper in her heart and her mind and her stomach will _not quit it with the unease_ but Seungcheol didn’t mean it to happen, so she doesn’t say anything. “I don’t know when. Probably next year. I hope.”

“You should try fighting Pledis on it. You have leverage.” He says it so forcefully and yet so sincerely that Nayoung can tell it’s a rare moment of extreme honesty, one she is unlikely to see again, for a variety of reasons.

“I won’t do that,” she says, frowning. “I just won’t think about it until I have to. No use in worrying twice.” It’s one thing at a time, and Nayoung has to deal with this leadership before she can tackle the next. Maybe then, things will be easier for her.

“You’re so practical,” he comments. The last corner of the room has been mopped and the floor is wet, shiny and clean.

“Practical?” she asks, but on her unexpressive face it registers as slightly alarmed eyes and he laughs. Still, there is a cheerlessness to his tone.

“Wise,” he says. “But you have to take risks. You gotta grab opportunities while you can. You never know when they’ll slip away.” He sounds like regrets.

 

-

 

One day in the long stretch of Pristin’s debut countdown, she plans an extensive dance practice for a routine she's choreographed herself, before getting 20 minutes into it and nearly collapsing of exhaustion. She has no lessons the next day, so Nayoung figures it'll be just the same if she rises early next morning and crashes now.

Yebin and Kyla are still at Pledis, so she calls them out to go home together. They’re dropped off a block too soon. The streetlamps light their way back to the dorms, but Nayoung is so sleepy she almost takes the wrong turn at the intersection. Yebin takes her by the wrist, guiding her until she can collapse in her own bed.

A voice in the back of her mind repeats _conviction_ and _tenacity_ over and over but her aching head forces her to ignore it and go to sleep. Everyone needs breaks. She can afford one. (And still stand above the rest? She can't fall to lowered standards-

She dozes off before she can complete the thought.

The alarm rings at 5:30am, a steady shrill beeping, a default setting she keeps because it’s so customarily irritating.

As she startles awake, a sliver of her dream flashes vividly in her head. It's still there in her mind like she just experienced it, not lost to the void yet.

Nayoung travels in a straight path on the sidewalk and a figure comes towards her, on the same side of the long street. The cross walk is in the middle of the road, providing a way to the other side before reaching the next intersection. To her right, the street is crowded with vehicles.

The path is marked with thick white lines of paint and a dirt-covered yield to pedestrians sign. Nayoung reaches the point to cross at the same time as the other person and they stand side by side, waiting for the passing cars to run out. Occupied by nonsensical, irrelevant thoughts, Nayoung doesn't think to look at their face.

When the street is empty, she crosses the street with them and turns left, continuing on her way. The other pedestrian turns right.

They never meet again.

(For all she knows.)

 

-

 

“Is it _practical_ ,” she asks, “to expect this much of Pristin?”

“Unnie, have you seen our members?” Jieqiong says, a rhetorical question, the bright smile ever present on her face breaking even larger. “It’s not that, but it’s _required._ ”

“They said we’d get these album sales but the charting is a little disappointing.” The staff and the reporters have made her into someone obsessive over things that didn’t matter before.

“We’re still on the charts though, which is impressive for a new group,” Jieqiong reminds her.

Nayoung twists her hair, drawing out a strand and letting it fall on the couch. Jieqiong’s legs are folded as she sits across from Nayoung, eating cantaloupe out of a plastic bowl. “I feel like being monster rookies has made me think great achievements are normal, and normal isn’t good enough. I feel like I can’t be realistic anymore.”

Pristin has this label now, but before Pristin, there was I.O.I.

Nayoung isn’t afraid to have this lost face in front of Jieqiong, isn’t compelled to sugarcoat her words to sound nice instead of mean when they’re really neutral. Her bottled feelings just pour out, the pressure inside relieved.

“It’s not fair to compare, unnie. But you can’t help it.”

Jieqiong’s understanding washes away this growing overinvestment Nayoung has in the numbers and the critical comments. She never lets this consume her, the stress and the worry, and it makes Nayoung think she might be able to do that, too.

Jieqiong wraps her slender fingers around her tightly clenched hand and squeezes.

Nayoung feels like crying.

 

-

 

(She forgets about this dream, and it's for the better-)

“I like you.”

Someone confesses to Nayoung, and she returns it with a full heart. Her brain never assigns an identity to them but in the moment all she feels is warmth and happiness and everything good. They must have had a history together. She has naive faith in herself, in them, things will work out. They'll be different. She will have her cake and eat it too.

She doesn't.

Her schedules are too much and the flutters of the will-we-won't-we dissipate, until she forgets to text and she sleeps in guilty fits.

The way dreams work, without structure or order, she ends up in her hometown, waiting for them to pick her up, she never knows what for. Nayoung just waits at the corner of her street, holding her hat onto her head in rebellion against it flying away in the wind. It could be a date or their escape, running off to the ends of the world to be together.

Anyway, they don't show. Her Romeo disappears and the (heartbreak) ensuing Dispatch scandal leaves her wondering if maybe she's really just not meant for love.

(When dreams feel too real, it’s easy to pretend they could be, creating those expectations and that pain.)

 

-

 

“When you were younger,” Sungyeon asks, “what did you want to be?”

Younger is a relative term. To reach a point where her professional goals were any different from what they are now, she has to rewind time at least 7 years.

“When I was really really young,” Nayoung recalls, “I wanted to be an artist.”

They have late morning tea in the dorm, the fluorescent kitchen light blinking in intermittence. Sungyeon pours more hot water from the stove into her mug, a bag of leaves immersed and diffusing color through her drink. Yewon has frequently expressed how disappointing it is that there’s no window in the room.

“Oh, that sounds fun.” Sungyeon’s eyes crease. She looks calm and quite not like she only got 4 hours of sleep last night. This chamomile tea should be a daily routine. Now that promotions are over, they actually have time to do this.

Sungyeon has lots of beliefs and bravery. However, Nayoung thinks, this confidence is more easily invested in others than in herself.

“I don’t think I could have become one,” she assures, thinking of her childhood drawings. “I only want what I can achieve. It was a good dream to have. I’m glad I found this job instead.”

Sungyeon’s expression is very serious when she looks at Nayoung, a face that’s reminiscent of years of training and difficulties that have yet to end. No path is easy, it conveys. “I mean, if you didn’t really want to do it, then it’s okay. But if you wanted to do it it wasn't wrong to want to. You just have to try,” Sungyeon says emphatically. “Do it, and if it fails, forget and try something new. But try.”

“I have lots of second thoughts,” Nayoung says. Her eyes turn wistful. “About not trying. About my choice to try,” she says, tracing the characters for Pristin with her index finger on the dining table. “Still, I’m here now.”

Sungyeon smiles. “Anything can happen if you put your mind to it. Though not everything will just because you do. We’re very lucky to have made it this far.”

“Is it bad if I want more than this?” Nayoung asks, thinking of lofty career goals, her greed and her ambition.

“No,” Sungyeon says. “It’s human.”

 

-

 

_I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want to be forgotten about, I want to be loved._

Nayoung gazes into the mirror.

“Do I want more than I can have?”

_I will get there because I can._

 

-

 

Caught in the rain, Nayoung walks briskly through the light cover of a canopy of streetside trees.

The raindrops fall harder, an endless stream of water from the clouds, making her ask herself desperately why she’s in this position. Why she didn’t check the weather this morning and bring a raincoat.

Her thin cotton jacket has a hole in the sleeve, worn out from too many years, and she sticks her thumb through it. It’s comforting. Her gray hood soaks, the wet seeping into her skin and reminding her she’s going to have a headache when she gets to class. The bag she has hanging on her shoulder has to be held tightly close to her and it keeps her from running.

Dongduk University is far from her dorm, she has to walk because the bus broke down when she tried to board and the driver said there’s not another one coming this morning. She’s already gotten out of bed though.

She hears sudden footsteps behind her and keeps her glance trained forward, before she sees a yellow canvas appear at the top of her vision. She blinks, and the metal spokes spark her recognition.

The umbrella spins over her, edges blurring together and droplets falling in a circle around her. Nayoung tilts her head upwards in amazement at the color, and turns around.

Nayoung sees starry eyes, reliability, bright countenance, the entire world and

Choi

Seung

Cheol.

 

 

  
  
She wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [a masterpiece](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9267506)
> 
> sequel [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13626951)


End file.
